On tour with
Frank Sinatra and
Liza Minnelli

Published
in the Sunday Independent of April 15th, 2001 and reproduced here
by kind permission of the editor.

Frank liked working with a big band - more than anything
else. He was a product of the big-band days, and all the time I played with
him he used a big band. In fact, he used three big bands. When he was working
on the west coast of America, he had what was called his Los Angeles band,
which worked up the west coast and as far inland as Chicago. Then he had
his New York band, which worked the east coast and as far inland as Chicago
from the other side. This band would also go to Africa, South America and.
Argentina. Then there was his European band, where there were people such
as myself. But he had a nucleus of guys who travelled everywhere with him.
There was, from 1951, Bill Miller on piano. He also conducted for Sinatra.
Irv Cottler, the great drummer, was always with him from 1955. The guitar
chair was always covered by Tony Mottola or Ron Anthony and the outstanding
bass player of all this period was Gene Cherico. When Frank's son, Frank
Junior, was made conductor, he liked to use the people who had worked with
him performing his own act in Las Vegas. He liked to use the Las Vegas musicians
a great deal. Sometimes it got so that I was the only working non-American
guy in the band. Most of the musicians who came to Europe were American
and I was the extra guy that they would pick up here. If they had to, they
would pick the string section up from here as well. The Frank Sinatra Ultimate
Tour beckoned. It was to consist of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior and
Frank Sinatra. However, before they came to do
the grand tour of Europe, which was in April 1989, Dean Martin cried off
ill. They got a last-minute replacement, Liza Minnelli. I had worked with
Sammy Davis, and had done his tours as well, so I was really looking forward
to seeing him again. We had spent 15 years together and I have to say he
was a really easy guy to get to know. Such a talented and sweet guy! If
there were ever a criticism to be made, it would
be that he was too nice.

Liza Minnelli is a very, very
talented person, but so insecure that it continually drove me up the wall.
I should have been prepared for this because I had worked with Liza at
the London Palladium a year before. At the first rehearsal the usual thing
happened with Frank: he wasn't there and we just ran some of the music
we would play. Sammy Davis came in and sang a couple of songs and was
happy with the sound of the orchestra and just let everybody get on with
it. Then Liza came in and insisted on going through every song she was
doing with the band over and over and over again.

At the end of the day, the
orchestra was quite exhausted, but we all felt, Right, we're going
on tour; that was the end of all that. We'll just do our usual 10-minute
sound checks and get ready for the show. This was not to be! After
the very first night, Liza's insecurity began to show even more. When
we opened in Milan, she insisted on a sound check. To explain, a normal
check is for the sound man to make sure the microphones are working properly
and the speakers are responding properly and that's it! Most singers,
if they were going to turn up at all, would sing six or eight bars and
turn around and say Thanks very much and go. This was what
happened with Sammy Davis, though not with Frank as he wouldn't bother
turning up. But Liza's insecurity wouldn't allow her to do this, so she
would half rehearse her act again.

We did the show, and more
of the same in Rotterdam. By this time, Sammy Davis wasn't turning up
for the sound check either, but Liza was there again! Her conductor and
drummer was a gentleman called Bill LaVorgna. He was an excellent drummer,
so he played and conducted at the same time. He, coincidentally, had been
the drummer for Liza's mother, Judy Garland.

Judy was the complete opposite
to Liza; she hated rehearsing and hated having anything to do with it
at all. In fact, a short anecdote sums up one of Judy's idiosyncrasies.
There was a session with EMI and a 70-piece orchestra was booked. In a
normal recording session the arranger/conductor takes the piece through
once to make sure everything is in order and then might try certain sections
to get them even better. Then the singer would sing along with the orchestra
whilst the engineer would balance the sound of the voice and orchestra.
However, Judy turns up and stands at the microphone straight away, ready
to go.

The engineer is doing a levels
check to make sure the sound of the voice is all right and balanced, and
Judy says to him to record it. He assumes she is asking him to record
the rehearsals so that she can double-check things herself. So he records
it and when she finishes the song, she turns around to the orchestra and
says Thank you very much chaps and walks out. If that was
a situation with Liza, the orchestra would have played it 26-30 times.

Anyway, back to the tour and
Liza. We moved on to Stockholm and the same thing happened. By this stage
she had fixed on something she could relate to: a song which I seem to
remember being called Ring Them Bells. I began to hate this song so much
that I would even wake up remembering the whole chart in minute detail.
There was a little transition section in the middle. In Stockholm, she
felt that it was a bit long and the conductor said that this was no problem
and turned to the orchestra and instructed us to take two bars off, making
it shorter. The next day, in Oslo, we were sound-checking again and she
felt that it was too short. We put the two bars back in and spent hours
over this, until she finally felt happy with it.

We arrived in Gothenburg,
got to the venue, started to sound-check - and there she was again. At
this stage she felt that it was not long enough, so Bill put another two
bars onto this section and we spent two hours rehearsing it, until she
felt comfortable. Next stop, Helsinki, where she changed her mind yet
again! By now she felt it should be the original length, that it was too
long . . . and so again we were rehearsing until she was satisfied! Somewhere
else, and again - too long, too short!

I was sitting alongside Bill
and he must have heard me saying the strangest of things in a very weird
language, but he was an awfully nice guy and took no notice of me at all.
The only time this rigmarole changed was in Paris. Liza's special friend,
Charles Aznavour, had turned up. She had asked him about the show and
he was an old pro at this; his reply was, Everything's fine baby,
everything sounds great! So there were no more sound checks. Perfect!

But Paris only lasted for
four days and we were on to Amsterdam. The same routine started again
- Munich, Vienna and Dublin! I'll never forget Liza Minnelli, a very talented
artist, and, despite all of the above, a very charming and nice person.
It is just that this little bit of insecurity plagued her and in turn
plagued the life out of us as well.

Dublin was, for Frank, Sammy
and Liza, something really special. I had never seen them enjoy a city
more than this - and we had played most of the major cities in Europe.
This was all thanks to a gentleman called Oliver Barry. He made them extremely
welcome and they were so happy with him. His generosity and warmth and
the time he spent with them paid off. I had never seen Frank laugh as
much as he did, or Sammy clown around so much and Liza, just this once,
forgot about her anxieties and had a ball! Dublin was, for everyone, one
of the nicest things that happened to us. I am sure that if Frank Sinatra
was still alive he would agree with me. I would have loved to have been
there or heard what Oliver Barry did to make them so happy, but he sure
worked the magic ...

We came back to Dublin again
in June 1990 with Frank and did an extremely short tour, just Stockholm,
Dublin and Scotland. By now, Frank's memory was really playing him up
and I began to think his hearing was going as well. The frustration this
caused made him very, very unhappy at times. So much so that any time
the guys would spot him in the bar, they would disappear in case he exploded.
It must be a terrible thing to be a perfectionist and a man of such outstanding
talent, and then suddenly to be confronted with the fact that growing
old means that you are likely to lose your memory and other facilities
and, in the grand scheme of things, not be able to run as fast.

For someone like Sinatra,
that must have been extremely cruel. But, like the rest of us, he had
to accept it. What really put the killer touch on this tour for Frank
was that a month before it started, his great friend Sammy Davis died.
Having all of that on his mind while still having to try and perform was
incredibly hard. It was also becoming more evident at the beginning of
every concert that it was taking longer and longer to get his voice under
control.

In 1991 we were back in Dublin
for the Diamond Jubilee tour with Frank Sinatra, Steve Lawrence and Eydie
Gorme. Frank looked - and sounded - a bit calmer and seemed to have accepted
the inevitable. Unfortunately over the previous 10 years, a distance had
grown between him and the band. This, I believed, was due to the deep
frustration that he felt at the deterioration of his voice and strength.

The last of Frank's visits
to Europe came the following year, in June 1992. By now the struggle was
becoming more difficult for him. The reception at the Albert Hall was
rather mixed; his fans knew exactly what he was going through night after
night on the stage. It was like watching the heavyweight championship,
except that instead of doing three rounds and winning, Sinatra was fighting
15 rounds and coming out slightly groggy. There was also the terrible
tragedy of his nearest and dearest friend, Jilly Rizzo, who had been killed
in a car crash one month before Sinatra came over.

Carrying all this on his shoulders
while still trying to attain some form of artistic perfection would have
been totally impossible for any other human being, but Frank Sinatra was
no ordinary human being. He went back to the States and seemed to attain
a new lease of life, busy as ever recording all over the place, performing
and still doing benefits and charity concerts.

In October 1993 a new album came out with 13 of this
best hits sung with people such as Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand,
Liza Minnelli and Carly Simon. The Duets Album was a great success, not
bad for a 78-year-old. Robert Mitchum once said that if he had to fight
anyone in the world, the person he would least like to be up against would
be Frank Sinatra, because no matter how often you would put him down,
he would get up and start again.

Sadly, Frank collapsed during a concert in Richmond,
Virginia. Everybody was very, very quick to write him off. But as Mitchum
had said, you can knock him down but he'll get straight back up again.
Sure enough, the following August, he was back on stage in New Jersey,
collecting the Francis Albeit Sinatra Tribute for Performing Arts. This
was a special award that was given to him for improving cultural life
in New Jersey. The rest of the year was full up with concerts and benefits
that he attended. In 1994, the follow-up album to Duets came out.

In 1995 Warner records announced plans to release a
tribute album of Frank for his 80th birthday. It was difficult to realise,
looking at this 79-year-old man, that he had found a new inspiration.
His chops were frazzled, his voice nothing like it was, but his presence
and personality and the atmosphere that he always managed to create was
still there. I used to think his personality was so strong that he could
send his shadow in and it could do the show for him. Towards the end of
1995, though, he began to slow things down and he was seen at fewer functions.

In January 1996, with Sinatra 80 years and one month
old. Reprise released an album entitled Everything Happens to Me, 19 songs
telling the story of a man much like Frank Sinatra, who had loved and
lost and loved again.

This is the end of my Frank Sinatra story, but I would
prefer not to think of it as the end of Frank Sinatra. The voice will
go forever ... At the end of most concerts he would raise his glass, toast
the audience and say: Your health, may you live to be 400 years
old, and may the last voice you ever hear be mine!